New members March 2006
A warm welcome to...
John Vinton,
Matt
Morley-Brown and
Carole Lowe of Archibald
Ingall Stretton, and also to writer
Jonathan
Buckley. We hope you enjoy and contribute to the
26 experience. Remember, 26 is what you make it.
Finally, for our new members...A big thank you for joining 26.
We started meeting as a group in 2002. We were eight individuals in search of others involved in the daily business of working with words. We simply wanted to share our experiences and ideas, and learn from one another. You can find out more about us at
http://www.26.org.uk/who.htmNews spread of our meetings, and it soon became clear that 26 could be, should be, something much bigger than just us. So we decided to open up the organisation to other writers, editors, language experts and anyone else with a love of language. We launched 26 formally in September 2003...
...And here you are. We’re delighted you’ve become one of 26. We hope we’ll get to explore and enjoy language together in all sorts of interesting and unexpected ways.
26 is open to new ideas from any of its members. We would be especially pleased to hear from you if you'd like to be involved in 26 talks, publications, seminars or other initiatives – even in a small way. You can reach us on 0870 121 13 26 or at
talktous@26.org.ukAs for your 26 quid... thank you very much. The funds we’re raising with your annual subscriptions will go towards running events (most of which will be free to members), developing our web site, creating an online message board for members, and bringing to life a whole range of other initiatives we haven’t even imagined yet.
A number of members have asked whether they can refer to 26 on their business card or in their emails, web site, autobiography or whatever. We think this is a great idea as it helps to raise awareness. We just ask that you use the phrase One of 26, followed by the web site address www.26.org.uk.
In the meantime, your friends and colleagues can find out more about 26 and join at
http://www.26.org.uk , so spread the word.
So 26, lah
Last month, John Simmons went off to Singapore to spread the word about words. Here, in his own words, is what happened.
It seems to me that the whole purpose of Singapore is to do with shopping. It’s what the Singaporeans do really well and much of their life seems to revolve around it. It’s all about buying and selling, but without the British embarrassment. And because the heat and humidity can discourage some people from shopping, enormous air-conditioned shopping malls have been built. If you’re a canny shopper you need never feel the sticky outside atmosphere, you just wander under cover from mall to mall.
I was not absolutely in tune with this. I’m not a great shopper. In a couple of hours I felt I’d bought all the bargains I could handle for one trip.
So I had to concentrate on selling. I had two things to sell, both closely related. First the new editions of my books We, Me, Them & It and The Invisible Grail. Second, the whole idea of 26.
The trip had come about because Marshall Cavendish (who, with Cyan Books, support 26 and publish my books) are based in Singapore. It seemed a good idea to go there, build relationships with Marshall Cavendish, talk to people about words in business and the role of 26, and sell some books. After all, English is the first language, certainly of business there, and Singapore ranks No. 3 in the list of the world’s heaviest book-buying populations.
So it turned out a busy 5 days, involving TV and radio interviews, and set-piece talks at three big events. First, a breakfast meeting for the Singapore-German chamber of commerce (strange but true). Second for 150 people at the Singapore Civil Service College. And third for the British Council at Singapore Management University.
The British Council event, with 250 people in the audience, felt most like 26. People were intrigued, amused, stimulated by the potential of words in business. The event was part of the British Council’s Knowledge Network, which brings people together around a subject of interest. Extraordinary when you think that 3 years ago 26 did not exist – and now here I was talking about it to a big audience in South East Asia.
There’s interest in 26 there and we now have useful contacts with many people, particularly the British Council. Singaporeans are thirsty for knowledge. If any 26ers are planning a trip out there, let us know – we now have a possible 26 chapter in the making. And, if it’s what you like, the shopping is great.
Thanks too to Andrew Gurnett of the British Council for the Coxford Dictionary of Singlish. I’ll brush up mine if I ever go back:
“Why you so loh soh one?” loh soh = longwinded
“Got food must eat, lah!” lah is everywhere, like a full stop in a sentence
“I decided to pontang” pontang = skive
Hearing colours, tasting shapes
Do you 'see' letters or numbers or days of the week in colour? Do some of your words have a texture? Do you even taste shapes? If so, Jamie Jauncey and Lucy Richards (partners in crime on the 26 Malts project) would like to hear from you. With help from Edinburgh University's School of Psychology, they're hatching a project around synaesthesia, as this particular condition (which may affect as many as one person in two hundred) is called. They've already had a good response from an earlier mailing of 26 members, but there's still time to sign up if you didn't catch the initial call. Simply email
jamie@jauncey.co.uk with a few words about how you think you experience synaesthesia, and please put 'Colours' in the subject line.
Jamie and
Lucy are looking forward to hearing from you.
And the survey says...
41 thank-yous to the people who have so far completed our Wordsworth survey. Of those, 87% write full time, 73% are self-employed and 60% have been writers for over ten years. In other words, we have an excellent sample of self-employed, experienced, full-time writers (who charge an average of £434.27 per day), but not yet a representative cross-section of the (writing*) 26 membership. For the full picture, we'd like as many responses as we can get, particularly if you're not one of the above. Please spread the word as much as you can. After the next flurry of responses, we'll get the topline results to you in the April newsletter and probably run another event:
Wordsworth II: The Fallout.
* We apologise to the designers for excluding you this time, but the results will be useful, promise.
Click here to take the survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=740031472785
Our next events
A performance by Sore Throat
Time: 7pm - 7.30pm
Date: Tuesday 25 April
Venue: The Elmwood Space, 8-9 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BP
Nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road
Sore Throat is the brainchild (and problem child) of DJ/producer Will Flisk and writer Mike Benson.
Blending blissful beats with broken spoken vocal, they have been recording, broadcasting and performing stories, poems and songs in the UK and beyond for the past five years.
Will Flisk has entertained weekend clubbers around East London with his frighteningly popular Moulin-X night and has produced a series of tracks for the critically acclaimed Comfort Zone compilations. In between gigs, Mike works as a copywriter, lyricist and storyteller for a variety of exciting bands, brands and agencies.
Sore Throat will be performing a tasty array of spoken word material, including a couple of brand stories, in an attempt to bridge the divide between entertainment and commerce.
This is the first ever live music 26 event, stand-up rather than sitting down, with a few chairs available for softies. We hope to have a drinks sponsor in place. Bring all your chums. Free for 26 members, £10 for guests. Thanks to Elmwood for letting us into their lovely home.
Branding brains of Britain
Looking further ahead, we’re lining up a brand quiz hosted by design agency 35 (so we're thinking of calling it 61). Volunteers are needed for the 26 team. So if you know your Maltesers from your Mercedes, please email sarah@littlemax.co.uk to claim your place. The nice people at 35 are inviting us to their lovely home in Camden, so those of you who get a bit uncomfortable when you stray out of W1 should prepare yourselves in advance for the cultural scene change. We'll be holding this on 23 or 25 May – we’ll let you know as soon as we do – so please block out both nights in red pen.
Get it on your chest
This is a call to all you designers out there. We’re looking for brave, provocative, but eminently stylish and wearable T-shirt designs to feature in the soon-to-be-launched 26 online shop. Are you up to the ultimate sartorial challenge?
We’re hoping to print them on 100% organic cotton, and offer them exclusively to discerning members of 26. We’re thinking short runs to keep things interesting and collectible, with plenty of room for lateral ideas and different approaches.
And while you’re at it, if you have any ideas for other items of merchandise with 26 appeal (except baseball caps) we’d be more than happy to hear from you. Just get in touch with Sarah at sarah@littlemax.co.uk, and we can get the ball rolling.
Three offers from Cyan Books
‘Great Brands Story: Arsenal’ by John Simmons & Matt Simmons (retail price £8.99, discounted to £4.99)
Football is big business, and it’s full of brands that are getting bigger day by day. One of the longest-established but now fastest-rising of these brands is the Arsenal. By exploring the development of Arsenal as a brand, this book provides an original insight into one of the world’s leading clubs and why so many people are passionate about it.
“There’s a knowledge of Arsenal that you get from a lifetime of supporting the team. Add to this a knowledge of brands and it makes fascinating reading.” Frank McLintock, former Arsenal captain.
‘Megatrends Europe: The Future Of A Continent And Its Impact On The World’ by Adjiedj Bakas (retail Price £14.99, discounted to £7.99)It’s 2050. The EU has been dismantled. Western Europe has become Islamic and has tied itself economically, politically and culturally (although not governmentally) with North Africa and Turkey to become Eurabia. This is one of the scenarios explored in this compelling book about the future of Europe and the impact it will have on the rest of the world. Written by a leading futurist, the book analyses the seven key trends (the so-called ‘megatrends’) that will radically reshape European business, culture, people, thinking, belief systems, countries and cities over the next 50 years.
“Anybody making plans for the future had better take note.” Eric Einhorn, Chief Strategy Officer, McCann Worldgroup.
‘A Whole New Mind: How To Thrive In The New Conceptual Age’ by Daniel H Pink (retail price £12.99, discounted to £6.99)This book describes a huge – but mainly undetected – shift now underway. We are moving from an economy and society built on logical, linear, computer-like capabilities of the information age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathic, big picture capabilities of what is rising in its place, the ‘Conceptual Age’. Daniel Pink describes six essential aptitudes – a whole new mind – that professional success and personal satisfaction will depend on in the new age, which anyone can master.
“Knowledge is no longer power. A self-help book has become an unexpected hit with the prediction that success will in the 21st century will depend on the ability to tear up the rules and think laterally…Pink’s book has become a word-of-mouth success and is already into its eighth print run in America.” The Sunday Times, 12 March 2006.
‘Paul Burke – A Talk Of Two Halves’ review by Sarah McCartney
Paul Burke should start the ‘Shut Up and Get On With It School of Writing’. He got into advertising from school after telephoning Abbott Mead Vickers and asking to speak to Mr. Abbott about a job as a writer. He got a job as a van driver and took it from there. Nobody told him that you weren’t supposed to do it like that.
At the October Gallery, Paul gave the 26 audience his views on writing radio ads and told us about how he got started as a novelist. Those of us who had braved the hailstorms (and decided against watching The Arsenal against Real Madrid) got a generous helping of Paul's passionate opinions and priceless advice. He reckons that the sense of timing you get writing for radio helps to make your fiction writing flow. In Mr. Burke’s case it has also given him a brilliant comic delivery. At school in London, one of his teachers told him, “Words are like pound notes, boy. Don't waste them”. So he doesn’t. (Or not when he’s only got 30 seconds into which they all have to fit.)
We heard some excellent radio ads, some bad ones and some excruciating ones. We learned that if you want more creative freedom to write for radio you should work in the US and Australia, definitely not the UK.
Nobody told Paul that you don’t just sit down and write a novel either. So he did. He bumped into an agent who got him a two-book deal so he had to write another one. He also told us how he earned enough money to buy a Ford Capri while he was still at school but if you weren’t there and you want to know how he did it, you're going to have to read his novel, ‘Untorn Tickets’ (ISBN 0340826150).
26 members recommend for March
26 is now an official Amazon affiliate. That means if you order a recommended book or CD by following the links to Amazon, 10% of what you pay will end up in 26’s coffers, helping us to put on more events and recommend more books. A virtuous circle, if you like.
......................................
‘A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian’ by Marina Lewycka (Penguin, list price £7.99 or £3.99 on Amazon)
An unlikely sounding title for a funny novel. It’s about Ukrainians but not much about tractors. It’s set in Peterborough... I’m going to stop there, this doesn’t sound too enticing. Against all the odds it works brilliantly – just read it.
JS
......................................Lord Malquist And Mr Moon by Tom Stoppard (Faber and Faber, £7.99 list or £6.39 on Amazon) Stoppard’s only novel (really? how did that happen?), ‘Lord Malquist And Mr Moon’ is peopled (as you might knowingly expect of something written the year before ‘Rosencrantz’) by the slightly deranged, on the fringes of where the real action is going on. So, in a timeless yet out of time London, meet a dandyish fop interested only in Style (is it Wilde? Johnson?), two upper-crust cowboys, an Irish Jesus, a lion and a diarist/historian (is it Bosie? Boswell?) suffering from an existential crisis, writer’s block and an uninterested wife. He has aphorisms to record, a state funeral to get to – oh, and there’s a bomb ticking in his pocket...
RD
......................................‘The Sun’ magazineThe American magazine, ‘The Sun’, is the polar opposite of the British tabloid of the same name. It’s a non-profit, ad-free monthly that gives a voice to oddballs, peace protesters, philosophers and former tramps. Stand out essays include Gregg Krech writing about the ‘Revolutionary Practice of Gratitude’ (December 2004) and Jeffrey Sawyer describing how he left his job, home, family and friends to walk across America (June 2004) without any money. There’s also poetry and enigmatic black-and-white photos. Good if you want unusual pictures, stories and ideas to stir your imagination.
www.thesunmagazine.org.
FT......................................Light my fireDan Flavin, US light artiste extraordinaire, has a rather fine show on at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. Good for kids. See
www.hayward.org.uk/flavin/retrospective.htm. And if you happen to be passing Wakefield, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park as another superb light exhibition on, this time by
James Turrell. The whole of YSP is great for kids.
RH......................................‘Word A Day’ newsletterIt’s hard to imagine a 26 member whose average day wouldn’t be improved by a subscription to the ‘Word A Day’ newsletter. Each day, normally in the morning, you are emailed with a word, its definition and etymology. Generally, there is a weekly theme and at the end of the week there is another email that rounds up subscribers’ emailed reactions to the words of the week. The choice of words is always stimulating and the themes are often witty.
It’s a joyful site, and in addition to cherishing words, they know how to use them. Here is their introduction to last week's theme: “This week we feature a potpourri of words. We opened a dictionary, shook it gently, and these words fell out. They came in all shapes, sizes, and senses. They're short and long. They’re flighty and grouchy. Call ’em what you will, a medley of words, a farrago, or a gallimaufry. They’re disparate, they’re diverse. They are varied and variegated, unclassified and unsorted. And they’re all ready to serve.”
Need further persuasion? It's free. Hurry now to
www.wordsmith.org and
don’t look a gift word in the mouth.
ML......................................‘The Whole Equation’ by David Thomson (Abacus, £9.99 list or £6.59 on Amazon)Opening the paperback edition of David Thomson’s ‘The Whole Equation’, you wonder if it’s not a little close to self-congratulatory overkill that there are three pages of quotes and praise for the hardback edition. It turns out three pages is nowhere near enough.
Thomson’s history of Hollywood is a triumph. Aphorisms and insights abound on every page, and nearly every paragraph. His idiosyncratic, conversational style disarms you like a warm bath, but then a snarl of a robust critical judgement suggests there's some mercury in the water with you. His thoughts on the business, the geographical and social advantages of being way out west – the hard light, and the soft law, primarily – the studios, the (re)making of stars, the fiction of the numbers and the way they can be manipulated to tell any story the studio might care, are never less than provocative.
But the book’s greater achievement is to restore the role of writers: from first to last, everything turns on words and stories, both on screen and in the myths that surround it. And how can you not love someone who says this: “Broke writers need their confidence restored before they can write. They need a couple of Martinis and a steak dinner.”
RD
......................................‘Wallace and Gromit: The Curse Of The Were Rabbit’ (2 DVD set £22.99 list, or £13.79 on Amazon)Just out on DVD, and now with a gleaming Oscar to boot. Nick Park keeps the pace at full throttle and the gags flowing freely in his first full-length animated feature. As usual, it’s the details that make this film special, so keep your finger on the pause button. I particularly liked the retro fridge with the SMUG logo and the bookshelf crammed with cheesy literature – ‘The Hunt For Red Leicester’, ‘Brighton Roquefort’, ‘How Green Was My Cheese’, ‘Brie Encounter’, ‘Swiss Cheese Family Robinson’, ‘East of Edam’, ‘Grated Expectations’, ‘Fromage To Eternity’, and my personal favourite, ‘Waiting For Gouda’.
JD
......................................‘Unspeak’ by Steven Poole (Little, Brown, £9.99 list, or £5.99 on Amazon)If you think politicians speak a mixture of fatuous nonsense and double-speak, this is the book for you. It’s a compelling diatribe against the way these jokers bend, brutalise and bastardise the language to their own devious ends. In many ways ‘Unspeak’ is an extension and update of Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics And The English Language, in which he wrote “Political Language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
JD
......................................‘Capote’ (United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics, directed by Bennett Miller)The story behind the writing of ‘In Cold Blood’, Truman Capote’s final novel, whose starting point was the brutal, real-life killings of the Clutter family on a rural farm in Kansas. Capote befriended the convicted killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickick on Death Row, and was even rumoured to have had an affair with Smith. The film is a poignant exploration of the role of the writer, given credence by an Oscar-winning performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman. It raises pertinent questions about the line between detachment and subjectivity, fiction and non-fiction, and the morality of the artist. Brave subject matter for Hollywood, and deftly handled too.
www.sonyclassics.com/capote.
JD
......................................This month’s plugs by Jim Davies, Rishi Dastidar, Roger Horberry, John Simmons, Martin Lee and Fiona Thompson. These are not necessarily the views of 26, but we hope they’re not far off the mark. Any contributions gratefully received.
